1. Field of the Invention
The disclosure relates generally to image processing methods and systems, and, more particularly to image processing methods and systems in accordance with depth information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, portable devices, such as handheld devices, have become more and more technically advanced and multifunctional. For example, a handheld device may have telecommunications capabilities, e-mail message capabilities, an advanced address book management system, a media playback system, and various other functions. Additionally, most handheld devices may be equipped with an image capture unit for capturing images. For example, users can take photos using the camera set on the handheld device. Due to increased convenience and functions of the devices, these devices have become necessities of life.
Currently, the 3D content industry has grown due to application and growth in multimedia systems, computer gaming, 3D TV broadcasting systems, and others. With the development of 3D content, the image capture unit of the device may be a dual-camera. Dual-camera is a device that can provide two different points of a view at the same time, therefore the same object will produce two different geometry views to the two captured images. The distance of an object from the photographer can be measured by analyzing the difference of the left and right images. The measurement result is the depth map, which indicates the depth (distance between object and photographer) of each pixel in the image. With the depth information of the image, the image can be viewed with a 3D effect as real world.
In the handheld devices, some simple image effects, such as adding a specific frame can be applied to the image captured by the image capture unit. However, when users want to add other image effects to the captured image, users must first use the handheld device to capture an image, and transmit the image from the handheld device to a computer. Then, image editing software can be operated in the computer to process the image, such that related image effects can be added to the image. Above image processing operations for images captured by the handheld devices require related operational knowledge and many manual operations. The required operations are time-consuming and inconvenient for users